Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema
by Jamie Russell
Fab Press, 320 pp., $29.95 (paper)
The eating of brains has become a business, and author Jamie Russell does a great job tracing the slow, shambolic rise of the zombie. Citing the early works of adventurers like William Seabrook, whose 1929 book The Magic Island recounts a face-to-face encounter with “undead” laborers after their souls were stolen by sorcerers, Russell details early American interest in Caribbean and Haitian occult and voodoo. The schmaltzy 1932 Bela Lugosi vehicle White Zombie was itself a catalyst for a horde of horror films in the Thirties and Forties. During this time, the zombie was most often black, and the star was white anxiety, not-so-subtly underscoring Depression-era race issues and looming poverty. The Fifties brought a new kind of sci-fi monster, one thrust upon an America frightened of invasion and nuclear war. And while zombie flicks in the Fifties were scarce, George Romero’s 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead brought the genre back to life. As Russell points out, Romero was the first to make the zombies flesh-eaters, shipping in actual animal entrails for extras to eat in several scenes. It was a new kind of undead, one born not of mythology, but of homegrown paranoia, says the author: “Romero takes the paranoid fears of Invasion of the Body Snatchers – in particular its vision of the mass as a terrifyingly homogeneous entity – and multiplies them several times over.” The Seventies continued with several films shattering the “hippie dream”: notably David Cronenberg’s Shivers and Romero’s 1978 consumer apocalypse Dawn of the Dead. Italian directors like Lucio Fulci are given their own chapter, as his Zombi trilogy tackled a more perverse and sexualized style. “Splatstick” films like Evil Dead, Re-Animator, and Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste and Braindead covered the Eighties, and most recently 28 Days Later marked a rebirth with its “post-9/11 apocalyptic anxieties.” Russell’s collection is expansive and astutely detailed without turning into a heady college text. He jazzes it up with humor, the discussion of rare films, and an impressive, lengthy section of color posters and stills. And, of course, he imparts one piece of wisdom for those in the zombie business: Always aim for the head.
This article appears in June 16 • 2006.